sunday at the movie-couch: the awakening, war horse

i don’t know which of the two was the scariest, but i’m quite sure the Spielberg melodramatic honeydew-soaked flick wins this title.

deemed boring by many, magnificent by others (and we do want their names) War Horse is a long, boring and childishly made film about a horse. not about the boy who goes to war to find him, not about the people who meet him, about a horse and he does give a great performance, gracing us with his very own “Spielberg Face” (see video here) as does everyone else of course, a lot.

there’s a lot of sentimentalism, a lot of unrealism, a lot of horses dying and we’re fed up with it! no more horses dying, just no more, it’s unbearable.

to say that war horse was easy to watch would be both true and a lie: true because of the complete lack of anything really interesting, from story to cinematography; a lie because next time i’m presented with a spielberg-directed “thing” i’ll shoot myself in the leg not to watch it, that’s how unbearably bad this film was to me.

now on to the next least scary thing of the weekend, my lunch included: The Awakening.

hmm, let’s see, there’s a big house in the english countryside, there’s kids, a governess, ghosts, a dark lake, there’s high trees and a tower.. there’s a question of plagiarism? unfortunately not, i don’t think resembling very closely a book is considered copying but adaptation, taking after, other synonyms of the like.

first there was The Sixth Sense, then there was The Others, then El orfanato and my thesis about henry james and horror. i once thought that intertextuality was cool, and i’m saying cool to avoid writing another essay here. but ever since i wrote my first one back in 2010 the cinematic world seems to have gone a bit too far. and i’m taking this very personally, for all the reaserach i’ve done (maybe one day i’ll publish it, yes).

anyway, the awakening is a very well played poshly british attempt at staying on those films i mentiond earlier’s tail. it will probably succeed at the box office, but the endless repeating of the same thriller/horror clichés that were established and done with by the beginning of the millennia results in boredom for those who are well versed in the literature of the genre.

now the awakening is not a bad movie persay, the cinematography is within norm, the settings both inside and outside are very realistically scary and the scenes are well-contructed. aside from the cigarette smoking, which is a new approach at keeping the attention on the main character lady instead of just using tearful or terrified close-ups, everything is very beautiful to see, but kind of boring to watch.